A federal judge in Texas on Thursday allowed a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X against the liberal group Media Matters to proceed to trial after denying the group’s dismissal request.
Musk’s X filed the suit against Media Matters in November after the group published a report that showed pro-Nazi posts and antisemitic or otherwise hateful content on the platform appearing next to advertisements from major U.S. corporations. Several companies, including Apple, IBM, Comcast and Lionsgate Entertainment, paused their advertising in response to the controversy.
X pushed back on Media Matters’ report, saying the group “completely misrepresented the real user experience” on the platform and manipulated the algorithms that curate users’ feeds to get “racist, incendiary content” to appear next to large advertisers’ paid posts. Attorneys representing the company said the report was “intentionally deceptive” and caused financial harm.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas ruled that X had Media Matters’ request to dismiss the case on jurisdictional grounds and what it viewed as X’s failure to state a claim was faulty and dismissed the request.
